Anybody for VHEM?
 

Saw an article about the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" that's been around since 1991...immediately thought of Frank Lee (wink,wink).

Sounds sorta "self-defeating" to me...sacrificing humanity for Mother Earth.

I always thought humanity "culling" was *THE* function of war.

Heard of it. Don't see any connection with my thoughts, except the voluntary part of the reproduction regulation thing.

The path we're on- the overpopulation path- is unsustainable and could lead to our extinction and for sure leads to the extinctions of many other species.

That's not what I'm about.

Quality of life is #1. Not quantity. Too many or much of anything ruins quality of life.

Humanity seeks to outsmart Mother Nature and so far, has a pretty good record of bending the rules to it's favor. But M.N. seeks balance. The world is getting pretty far out of balance. Someday it's going to have to get back.

Zero population growth is a good start. If everyone had 0, 1, or 2 kids growth would slow and eventually slooooooowly decline- a good thing. P.S. Oh look! Everyone still gets the satisfaction of putting their gonads to work! :thumbup: The Duggars of the world would need to find a new hobby though.

Speaking of balance, some allegedly smart people think the answer is to colonize other planets. I guess that's easier and more plausible than expecting people to be in control of their gonads. :rolleyes: So, would inter-planetary colonization be a feather in Humanity's cap as some/many think? I think leaving an entire planet a smoldering wreck in favor of a new one to exploit then destroy is more like a black eye.

P.S. What a timely headline story: http://www.aol.com/article/2015/10/2...time/21251535/ Bah! Species! Who needs 'em? We have "developing" to do, resources to exploit, and dollars to chase.

My family tree ends with me. 3 more males of the next generation from 4 brothers ain't bad.

regards
mech

Just the opposite will be the problem in 50 years or so. Developed nations have negative population growths, and it seems reasonable that globalization and technology will continue to improve standards of living everywhere.

When children are no longer needed as a means of welfare for the family, humanity will have to provide incentives to reproduce since kids are such an enormous liability.

The U.S. would have a negative population growth if it weren't for the extra citizens we pick up via immigration. Japan has a problem of a contracting population, and more importantly, shrinking working population.

Although nature has provided the reproductive drive needed for our species success, we have outwitted it by understanding how the process works, and how to extract enjoyment out of reproductive activities without the resulting offspring.

Overpopulation will never be the catastrophe Soylent Green imagines, and certainly won't be the accidental cause of extinction.

I'm all for intelligent population management involving proper incentives/disincentives to achieve a healthy reproduction rate. Any extreme view that advocates zero children or many children is clearly absurd.

Already are and have been for a long time. :/ :mad:

The only "problem" will be propping up govt Ponzi schemes. Otherwise the planet will breathe a sigh of relief. There is more to life than the dollar.

Governments, bidnesses, churches, and humanity in general would be best served by working on sustainable bidness models instead of the inane growth model they've skated by on all these years.

Not true. Really, the only developed countries with negative growth rates are Japan and some of the former Soviet Bloc countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...on_growth_rate

But in fact standards of living go down (by any non-slanted measure) in developed countries, as large fractions of the population are condemned to live in the human equivalents of battery chicken farms.

It's simple math: the same WEALTH distributed amongst more people = decline in living-standard.

Look at Europe. White people are likely to become a minority there in about 20 years. I'm not "racist" at all, but that's frightening...

Doesn't Germany have a declining or very small pop growth?

Negative growth rates in a handful of countries mean nothing when there are 180+ other nations more than making up for it, and the species' population continues (and will continue) to enjoy not just a robust positive growth rate, but greater absolute growth even as that growth rate declines.

https://bfi.org/about-fuller/biography

All these questions were answered so that humanity, when it is ready, will have the tools on the shelf to solve it's problems. He said that machinery operates at an overall efficiency of 4% and constructed buildings at 1%; so 'simply' double those numbers and increasing numbers of people can enjoy a standard of living unobtainable by anyone living today. Seriously, look it up.

We are stuck at the bottom of a gravity well, but if development of the Em-drive continues we will have Star Trek impulse power.*

'ASICs melting in the heat, and the blockchain goes on and on...'

Edit: *And transparent aluminum.

All population graphs show a declining rate of population growth. I'm telling you, even though we only see the problems of overpopulation with our short-term perspective, the long-term problem will be a dwindling population.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/c...dapt.768.1.jpg

https://overpopulationisamyth.com/co...still_growing.

It is true, really. The only reason many of the developed countries have positive growth rates is due to immigration. Obviously, people want to move to where the prospects are good, and that causes the population to increase. That doesn't mean their birthrates are greater than replacement.

Standards of living in developed countries are better for the entire population than those in poor countries. Heck, I would consider myself to have won the lottery to be homeless in the U.S. considering I could have just as easily been born in some place like Liberia.

The poorest in the U.S. enjoy a higher standard of living than the average conditions in the rest of the world. Despite a world population of 7 billion, I'm enjoying a much better life than even a king from 200 years ago when there was just 1 billion people.

Instead of viewing people as merely a resource consuming liability, you can view them as an asset that offers new ideas and labor.

I don't see how that is frightening. People are people, regardless of color.

I'm looking forward to the day when you can't tell what "race" someone is by looking at them because we'll all be mutts.

A declining growth rate is still growth.

Redpoint,

I am having flashbacks of one of my threads that I asked to have closed, but something we discussed, or at least I tried to, was clean water. I imagine that many criticize municipal water sources, but at least the homeless should have access to water fountains, and that is an advantage that millions lack.

Growth is growth. Doesn't matter if they are born to current inhabitants, decide to move in from elsewhere, or are brought by the stork: the population still increases.

Isn't it amazing how sometimes "genius" can't see the blindingly obvious? (For instance, the major flaws in his "Dymaxion" house and car.) A great deal of what goes into the poorly defined "standard of living" is provided by nature rather than being produced by machinery, and so has a fixed upper limit. Supply more humans, and at best the amount available per capita goes down. Then figure that humans thoughtlessly destroy much of the capacity...

Not me. I like diversity.

Trash-talking Bucky? Well...

Look into it sometime.

• 'metaphysically engendered materials'
• 'wired to wireless, tracked to trackless'
• 'doing progressively more with less, until...'

You're right about "standard of living", of course. A person used to purchasing and consuming might not understand or value a standard based on life in mental spaces or virtual spaces.

Then there's this:

The Case for Making Humans Smaller - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

TLDR: A human 50cm tall would consume 2% the food and fuel.

Here's a thought experiment: Suppose everyone was given a choice at age eight; go through puberty, bulk up, have kids and die. basically the deal now. Versus decline puberty, stop growing at 50lb and live forever.

What choice would your eight-year-old self make? What choice would eight-year-olds make two generations from now?

Is the eight year-old bullying or being bullied?

Don't get me wrong, I was referring to the cultural aspects, not the racial ones. I could really care less about other peoples' skin colors or nationality, as long as their culture and religion doesn't serve as an excuse to harass anyone else who disagrees with them. Get it? :thumbup:

I was thinking just the opposite, of course. For me, a decent standard of living requires ready access to a natural environment, which obvious becomes difficult to access if other humans have turned it into cities or factory farms.

Then there are limits on things like food supply. And even before the calorie limit is reached, you have a decline in quality and diversity of diet. How many Americans, for instance, have ever eaten meat other than factory-farmed beef, pork, chicken, and a turkey for Thanksgiving?

Yes, and an increasing decline in the growth rate can lead to a negative growth rate.

As we all know, any rate of increase or decrease is unsustainable.

Access to drinking water was not on my radar considering where I live. Portland has many public fountains that run continuously. I agree that everyone should have access to publicly provided drinking water.

That said, people elsewhere in the US must be finding adequate sources, otherwise we would see many people dying of dehydration.

Ha Ha, we can cross that bridge when we get there.

I'm sure inducing an increase in birthrates won't ever be an issue.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...sonBubbler.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Bubbler

They're all in the West side downtown area.

99% Invisible just had an interesting podcast about the first public drinking fountains. The Benson Bubblers were mentioned.

Fountain Drinks | 99% Invisible

Have all the VHEMers left the room yet?

Here's a water story, a new metaphysically engendered material (as Bucky would say)—a nanometer thick membrane of molybdenum disulphide with 'nanopores'. It has less pumping losses than reverse osmosis and doesn't clog up to boot.

Scientists develop ‘nanopores’ that inexpensively filter the salt out of seawater

Just think what this could mean.


Also:
Onion-like layers help this efficient new nanoparticle glow

"A new, onion-like nanoparticle could open new frontiers in biomaging, solar energy harvesting and light-based security techniques." Basically a carefully crafted bead absorbs infra-red light and re-emits it as blue or UV.

Trying to change the subject?

VHEM is absurd enough to safely ignore. The debate about publicly provided drinking water is a more interesting topic.

Is there anything to debate here? I find it quite a large leap to go from choosing to bear no offspring, and wishing all of humanity to do the same.

It is a VHEM thread, after all. :rolleyes:

I suppose one could start a water fountain thread and see how that goes.

I was trying to offer a counter-point to the VHEM premise. The proportion of VHEMers in society should diminish over time, right? Not that we couldn't all be snuffed out at the same instant of course, but what's the point of planning for that?

Maybe the proper refutation would be to point to R. B. Fuller's Design Science Revolution.

Why would Fuller say that? Because even back then he could see the environmental stress caused by humanity?

Why does nobody- well, james and I and a few others have mentioned it- address the quality of life issues of overpopulation? Maybe you guys LIKE long lines and congestion and chaos and no escape, but some of us don't.

I prefer to derail existing threads rather than start my own.

Are there long lines Up North? Have you tried living in previous eras to compare quality of life then, compared to now?

While it's impossible for me to know exactly what it was like to live with less people around, I'm fairly certain I enjoy antibiotics, plentiful food, electronics, leisure, and a relative lack of threat of enemy invasion.

I'd say that my quality of life is among the highest experienced by humanity. Perhaps there is a positive correlation between population and quality of life?

At any rate, Fuller is just pointing out the obvious that the rules of nature have winning strategies, and loosing ones. VHEM is a loosing one.

The real fear is Involuntary Human Extinction, which at the top of the threat list would include war/terrorism with biological/chemical/nuclear weapons. Have you seen Dr. Strangelove? It's terrifying that a species with so little understanding and control of their own emotions wields such great power.

Yes, there are. There is no escape except in inhospitable wastelands.

I feel as though my points are clear and easily understood. If anyone doesn't get 'em it's because they're just being obtuse.

Antibiotics, electronics, and so on were made possible by a small fraction of the current population of the Earth. Indeed, to a good approximation, by a small fraction of the US and western Europe. And what with one thing and another, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness.

Plentiful food and leisure? Well, hunter-gatherers had that, and overall a more varied diet than most people in the West consume today. As for lack of threats of enemy invasion, read the news from Europe lately?

You have to remember that correlation is not causation. Sure, some things have improved over time, while others have peaked and are now getting worse. But as above, the improvements are almost always created by a small fraction of the population.

On the contrary, nuclear and/or biological war seem to be the only things that can possibly divert humanity (along with most vertebrate life) from its current headlong rush to involuntary extinction.

Well, that certainly ended on a down note.

Yes, exactly. From about 1928 and on. He's considered the father of the environmental movement. He never said it was a sure bet — Utopia or Oblivion

That's a design problem. Try here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

It's a units per square inch problem.

It took everyone and all of history up until now to come up with it, even if just a handful of people provided the incremental technological improvements. I could just as easily argue that 1 person could have invented everything in the world, but the reality is that it takes millions of minds to produce the best ideas.

Besides all that, it takes the labor of the many to provide for the needs of the few that innovate.

Clearly false. Hunter-gatherers eat what they are lucky enough to stumble into in the environment, and then are subject to seasonal fluctuations in availability.

I'm able to gather ingredients from around the world for every meal. Bananas in the winter is no problem. I'd never eat one if I had to gather it from the PNW.

No, I'm not a consumer of the news. That said, violence is orders of magnitude less than in any period of time where populations were smaller. The trend toward decreasing violence persists despite enormous population growth. I don't even know anyone that has been killed violently. Back when the earth was vast compared to human populations, over half of adults would meet their end violently.

Again I'll point out that just because a few people can come up with great ideas doesn't mean we can select just those few geniuses to be born. It took everything that has happened in the past to arrive where we are today. Sure, it's not efficient, but it's effective.

And we're back to my assertion that having an abundance of children is not the natural thing we do when technology provides a means for our desires. Birth control and machines that accomplish labor intensive tasks make children unnecessary. We'll have quite the opposite problem in the future, even if we suffer some problems of overpopulation along the way.

https://youtu.be/c__XWMsz4aU

The real answer is we are a people without history.

Many things could have been historically invented and ignored or wiped away by stupidity, like certain historical libraries (first in greece, then off the tip of africa by the Spanish).

The truth is we may well have known how to care for ourselves as well or better historically but we have no real idea of the events from 7000 years ago are.

The truth is no where in our recorded history has our population continued on the type of upward trend that it has experienced recently.

Based on birth rates we are likely going to end up in decline in 20 years or so but how do we deal with the exponential rise in disease caused by our own arrogance?

It is far easier to have a lower population and live more freely than to have a very high one on the edge with many constraints and artificial means to prop it up, burning through resources faster than they are created.

I'm not sure what environment you want to live in, but I rather have things free and less complex, without a boogieman to keep people in line.

Ah well.

Where's the hogsheads per furlong in that? Those are specifically Design Science problems, badly resolved.

Let's try Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Edit:
Citation[s] needed. TIA

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...y-surprise-you

Hardly. As a pretty obvious example, suppose that as of start of the industrial revolution, the entire population of Asia, Africa, and South America had died from a plague. Would the technological development of Europe and North America been significantly different?

But there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of equally edible things which you could gather from your own neighborhood (assuming it's rural): everything from blackberries to camas to salmon. Likewise many things that were quite usual in at least some European-culture diets until the last century. You may be able to get a banana in the store, but how often do you see quince, cornelian cherries, gooseberries, currants, medlars, and more? (I happen to have all but the medlar growing in my garden, and I assure you they're all as delicious as that banana. Especially cornelian cherry jam :-))

But in this world, the vast majority of parents don't have children because they're necessary; they have them(simplistically, of course) either for ego gratification (think Duggars here) or to meet societal expectations. Consider the number of people in the west who resort to fertility drugs, in vitro fertilization, and the upcoming uterus transplant.